Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/195

 There is an incidental notice of Izdubar and his ship, in allusion to the story of his wanderings, in the tablet printed in "Cuneiform Inscriptions," vol. ii. p. 46. This tablet, which contains lists of wooden objects, was written in the time of Assurbanipal, but is copied from an original, which must have been written at least eighteen hundred years before the Christian era. The geographical notices on this tablet suit the period between B.C. 2000 and 1800, long before the rise of Babylon. In this tablet Surippak is called the ship or ark city, this name forming another reference to the Flood legends. Izdubar is also mentioned in a series of tablets relating to witchcraft, and on a tablet containing prayers to him as a god; this last showing that he was deified, an honour also given to several other Babylonian kings.

The legends of Izdubar are inscribed on twelve tablets, of which there are remains of at least four editions. Ail the tablets are in fragments, and none of them are complete; but it is a fortunate circumstance that the most perfect tablet is the eleventh, which describes the Deluge, this being the most important of the series. In chapter i. I have described the successive steps in the discovery of these legends, and may now pass on to the description and translation of the various fragments. All the fragments of our present copies belong, as I have before stated, to the reign of Assurbanipal, king of Assyria, in the seventh century B.C. From the mutilated condition of many of them it is impossible